Asensio shooting at KOSP:
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Short Story
Brett Nelson, Forbes Magazine, 11.26.01
Short-sellers tend to move under cover of darkness, launching stealthy guerrilla raids on stocks they deem ready for a fall. Not Manuel Asensio, a combative soul whose noisy frontal assaults on his targets have made him one of the least popular figures on Wall Street. Where fellow short-sellers deliver sotto voce comments on their picks to a select few, he takes short positions then posts vituperative screeds on the Web site for nine-year-old Asensio & Co., a broker-dealer and hedge fund manager. Other money managers, longs and shorts alike, discuss stocks with owlish aplomb. Asensio rants about "frauds" and "scams," sounding like Al Pacino in Scarface. .........
......Another Asensio prey is Kos Pharmaceuticals ($603 million cap), which has high hopes for Advicor, its new cholesterol drug. Asensio says Advicor has no advantage in a mature $10 billion market dominated by Pfizer, Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Chief Executive Daniel M. Bell admits he has only 300 sales reps against the triumvirate's 12,000, but says he has a superior product that both spurs good cholesterol and lowers bad. Meantime, Kos burns through a scary $9 million of its $50 million in cash each quarter. |
